Category Archives: Taco Bell

Post navigation

Someone told me the Volcano Taco no longer exists, so I hiked to my nearest Taco Bell to investigate. I’ve been trying to eat healthier of late, but I figured the two-mile walk would more than mitigate the damage done by a single taco.

My nearest Taco Bell pumps classic rock music all the time, which always seems out of place in the middle of East Harlem. Tom Petty’s “Running Down the Dream” was cranking when I walked in. Speaking of which:

“Do you still make Volcano Tacos?” I asked nonchalantly, as if it were a casual curiosity and not a pointed inquiry. I try to play it cool at Taco Bell and act as if I’m not in the 99.999th percentile of human beings in terms of Taco Bell knowledge. I don’t really know why. I guess I don’t want to embarrass myself in front of the Taco Bell employees.

“We don’t,” said the woman at the register. She stepped back and pointed toward a sign advertising the new Fiery Doritos Locos Taco. “If you’re looking for something similar, I could-”

I cut her off. I’m certainly interested in knowing how the new Doritos Locos Taco tastes, but I don’t particularly want one. Healthier eating means a far smaller monthly quota for Taco Bell items, and I’ve been so underwhelmed by both the Nacho Cheese and Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Tacos that I don’t want to waste any of my very limited Taco Bell intake on more Doritos Locos Tacos.

“Nah,” I said, shaking my head. “Could you–”

“You could get a regular taco with the same sauce,” she said.

“With the Lava Sauce, yeah,” I said, accidentally exposing that I’m aware it’s called Lava Sauce, prompting a fleeting moment of embarrassment before I remembered that I’m not at all ashamed to know that.

“So a regular Crunchy Taco plus Lava Sauce,” she repeated, pounding away at the register. There are buttons for that. We’re in the clear.

A few minutes later, I ate what tasted exactly like a Volcano Taco, containing all the same ingredients. The red taco shell is no longer available, but that was just a novelty anyway, gone the way of the Black Jack Taco shell because Taco Bell’s current gimmicky shell thing is making them out of Doritos, not giving them different colors.

As to that: Whatever. They’re not my thing, but clearly they’re popular, and anything that helps keep Taco Bell flourishing is fine by me. Plus, the burgeoning relationship between Taco Bell and Frito-Lay seems like a step toward global Taco Bell dominance, winning the Restaurant Wars and all that.

Plus, at some point, Taco Bell’s going to start making taco shells out of other snack chips, which should get interesting. How about a pretzel taco? I could get down with that.

As for the Volcano Taco, it joins the pantheon of great retired Taco Bell items like the Bacon Cheeseburger Burrito. It will exist forever in our memories, a reminder of the transitional era in which Taco Bell first started toying with taco shells but before they started covering them with Dorito stuff. And the Taco Bell lifehackers among us will know that we can taste the Volcano Taco whenever we want by adding Lava Sauce to a Crunchy Taco, even if that adds an element of entropy that makes the Taco Bell significantly more likely to screw up your order than if you could just ask for a Volcano Taco.

I walked out to the boring thump of “25 or 6 to 4” by Chicago, a band inspired by the Beatles’ “Got to Get You Into My Life” to fuse rock music with a horn section, and one that enjoyed great commercial success while making largely terrible music. Sometimes good ideas pay off even when poorly executed. Taco Bell powers forward.

Yesterday, the Internet heralded the coming of the Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Taco as if it’s a newly verified thing even though this site and many others have been all over that news for nearly half a year. Longtime friend of the program Gina Pace at the New York Daily News took time off from her diligent work on the Tom Brady moat beat to report and clarify the Taco Bell news, citing the research of one well-coiffed “sports writer and Taco Bell aficionado.”

I hope to have a more thorough review of Taco Bell’s new line of Grillers upon my return from vacation later this month. But last night I had the opportunity to enjoy a Beefy Nacho Griller at the World’s Weirdest Taco Bell — in the back of Liberty Cafe on 3rd Ave. in Manhattan — and, in lieu of a qualified defense of Rex Ryan’s decision to flee prying questions about Tim Tebow’s future for Bahamian beaches, I figured I’d provide a quick write-up now.

The Beefy Nacho Griller contains nothing new or unfamiliar to longtime fans of Taco Bell. It’s a burrito shell, wrapped and grilled around seasoned beef, nacho cheese and — this is important — crunchy f-ing red strips.

Reconfiguring longstanding Taco Bell ingredients into new Taco Bell menu items is right in Taco Bell’s wheelhouse, and Taco Bell knocks this one out of the park. It’s not large — the Griller series is marketed to snackers, and the Beefy Nacho Griller contains roughly the meatlode of a MexiMelt or Crunchy Taco.

But it’s delicious. The seasoned beef and nacho cheese combine to create a comforting, salty, peppery Taco Bell flavor. It’s not unlike the MexiMelt, actually, only the distinction in cheese styles renders the Beefy Nacho Griller more creamy than melty, and it comes without the frustrating need to specify no tomatoes.

Also, the tightly wrapped and grilled tortilla aptly contains the Taco Bell on par with the most portable prior products, producing a great treat for the drive-thru set or, in urban settings like this one, those who prefer to eat their Taco Bell while walking. And those red strips, by far the most underrated Taco Bell ingredient, continue to defy the ubiquitous orange Taco Bell grease, maintaining their crunchiness and creating a pleasant diversity of textures.

My one small gripe with the Beefy Nacho Griller is its somewhat high ratio of tortilla to filling, which seems unavoidable fallout from repurposing the burrito shell for a snack-sized product.

The Beefy Nacho Griller hardly launched to the type of hype that came with the Doritos Locos Tacos or the Cantina Bell menu, but Taco Bell traditionalists will find it far better than all those things.

I’ve got a podcast to record in a minute and most of this week’s Taco Bell news involves murder and death, so I’m avoiding it. Here are some less-terrifying Taco Bell items of note:

Two from Nation’s Restaurant News: In an unveiling about as predictable as Justin Verlander’s 2011 Cy Young Award, multiple Taco Bell offerings were named to the Nation’s Restaurant News’ list of “top menu rollouts” for 2012. More than 200 million Doritos Locos Tacos have been served to date, and Cool Ranch and Flamas versions are on their way once Taco Bell gets Frito Lay to make enough taco shells to catch up with demand.

Plot to steal tacos thwarted by tempting ATM: At least that’s how I assume it went down. Thieves in Dededo, Guam broke into a Taco Bell at 5 a.m. (Chamorro Standard Time) and stole an ATM, probably once they realized the blaring alarm would distract them from the late-night taco artistry they hoped to endeavor. The big news here is that Guam has a Taco Bell, and apparently Taco Bells in Guam have ATMs in them. Or at least, they used to.

Also, did you know that Guam is in the midst of a movement to change its name to “Guahan,” its name in the native Chamorro language? It is. That’s one thing I didn’t know about Guam. Also: Most other things. I bet it’s beautiful. I can’t figure out from this site’s metrics if anyone in Guam ever visits TedQuarters, so if anyone from Guam is out there, do say hello. The Internet’s crazy like that. Yesterday I got a visit from Laos though. Hello, Laos! I will see you soon!

Free Doritos Locos Tacos on the East Coast: Perhaps the least-heralded and certainly the least-important impact of Superstorm Sandy was the way it thwarted so many plans to eat the free tacos Angel Pagan got for all of us by stealing a base in the World Series. Taco Bell, bastion of benevolence, will make that right today by offering free Doritos Locos Tacos at participating locations in areas affected by the storm. The full list is included in the link. All three of my hometown Taco Bells on Long Island will provide free tacos from 2-6 p.m. this afternoon. My dad’s day just got a bit brighter.

Heretofore unknown Taco Bell product detailed: Because Taco Bell consumers in India are apparently not familiar with the peculiarities of Mexican-inspired American fast food, Taco Bells in India serve something called a “kotito.” Per Niren Chaudhary of Yum Brands:

[I]t is a fusion product. It has a combination of the Indian bread on the outside called koti [ph] and on the inside, it has the good old international burrito fillings.

So koti and burrito is kotito, a very outstanding product and one for which I would highly recommend that you make a trip to Bangalore. And if you take kotito on the way to Bangalore, I think the flight won’t seem that long.

That sounds outstanding. Someone more familiar with Indian food should chime in here, but I’m assuming “koti” is another translation for kati, which you can find in New York at, among other places, the Biryani Cart in Midtown right near my office. It’s good: Thicker than a burrito but thinner than a pita, chewy and moist. Seems like a fine delivery method for burrito stuff.

Incidentally, this site’s traffic metrics show that it gets a few hits a day from India. So if anyone reading this now is in India or going to India soon, please visit your local Taco Bell to photograph and eat a kotito. It turns out the Google Image returns for “kotito” are mostly scantily clad photos of a Japanese woman. This may surprise you, but the Internet already has lots and lots of scantily clad photos of women. But it has none that I can find of Mexican-inspired Indian fast food. With your help, I’d like to change that.

Guy who peed on Nachos claims that’s not what happened: For whatever reason, a Fort Wayne, Ind. reporter caught up with Cameron Jankowski, the former Taco Bell employee fired for photographing himself urinating on Nachos BellGrande. Jankowski claims that what we all thought was urine was actually a watered-down solution of Mountain Dew and water squirted from a bottle, which seems like a lot of effort to defile some nachos when you could just, you know, pee on them or something. But Jankowski claims he passed a lie-detector test, which is amazing for so many reasons. I like to imagine the police pulling a good-cop bad-cop routine, with the bad cop all up in this kid’s face like, “You peed on those nachos, you disgusting bastard! ADMIT IT!”

The article also says that, “Jankowski is currently a student at IPFW and is ironically studying business management.” To his credit, business management is the perfect thing to study ironically, and no one will ever accuse Cameron Jankowski of half-assing his jokes.

So what’s up with the Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Taco?: It turns out that factories producing Doritos taco shells couldn’t catch up with demand, so plans to unveil Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Tacos were held up while Taco Bell commissioned PepsiCo to “build two new lines to increase its capacity for taco shell production.” So there’s that.

The article also notes that there are 123 different flavors of Doritos worldwide, which is stunning. The web site Taquitos.net lists nearly 100 of them, including Peking Duck Doritos Gold, Gourmet Sausage Doritos, Ketchup Doritos, Pepper Bacon Doritos, and Wasabi Doritos.

We act like the Winter Meetings are the only thing happening when meanwhile there are Taco Bell things happening.

New York City fast-food workers move to unionize: I’ll continue avoiding politics as best as I can, but I thought you should be aware of why some workers at local fast food restaurants — including Taco Bells — have been walking off the job. This site supports Taco Bell employees’ efforts to earn a living wage through whatever measures necessary, and would be willing to pay a bit more for tacos to know that the people making them were happier and healthier.

The article suggests that Taco Bell will soon consider adding a larger dessert option, which brings me to an important point: Bring back the Choco Taco. Seriously, with the success of the cross-promotional Doritos Locos Taco, why not work something out with Klondike to ensure the sale of Choco Tacos in all Taco Bell stores? It’s a taco, but it’s choco — the perfect Taco Bell dessert. It’s f—ing Mexican, can’t you see?

Also of note: A Chipotle spokesman quoted in the article says Chipotle has no designs on dessert, which is odd to me because Chipotle makes me crave dessert 100-percent of the time I eat it. I think it’s partly due to the salt content, and mostly for Pavlovian reasons. When I was at NYU, one semester I had two evening classes with a 40-minute break in between. It was exactly the right amount of time to get myself to the Chipotle on 8th St., enjoy a burrito, then get a cookie across the street at Au Bon Pain. So I would heartily recommend Chipotle start carrying cookies.

Mountain Goats endorse Taco Bell: Unfortunately it’s not actual mountain goats, as that would be hilarious. It’s John Darnielle, lead singer and songwriter for the band The Mountain Goats, which I have heard of but never really pursued. Are they good? I’m open to the possibility, because Darnielle could be totally snarky and condescending about his affinity for Taco Bell — and is even baited to do so by the interviewer — but resists, calling Taco Bell “a lifesaver” for touring vegetarian musicians.

Taco Bell letting customers drive ideas: OK, remember my vaguely paranoid post from July outlining my suspicion that someone in Taco Bell’s marketing department reads this blog? Remember how I pointed out that the dude whose story was featured in one of the first Doritos Locos Tacos commercials was a friend of loyal reader/commenter Catsmeat’s, and that the first “significant discovery event” on his video’s YouTube page was being embedded on TedQuarters? Check out this quote from Taco Bell Chief Marketing Officer Brian Niccol:

The way we thought about launching it was, What’s the story? We wouldn’t have sold 100 million Doritos Locos Tacos in ten weeks if all we did was say, It’s a new product and you’re going to love it because it’s now made with Doritos. We really listened in a different way for this program, to what people were tweeting and saying on Facebook. And that’s how we got our launch execution. We found out this kid drove 900 miles to Ohio get a hold of a DLT during the market testing, and it became inspiration for the commercial….

With the DLT we’ve proven to ourselves that if you can let go of some of the control, then good things can happen. And that’s changed things here at the office. Since the the DLT success, we’ve knocked down three conference rooms and created a new social-mobile listening room, where we’ve got the largest TV screens I’ve ever seen keeping track of what people are saying about our brand every day and everywhere.

Taco Bell has “the largest TV screens [Taco Bell CMO Brian Niccol has] ever seen keeping track of what people are saying” about Taco Bell online. Which means…. HELLO, PEOPLE OF TACO BELL! THANK YOU FOR READING TEDQUARTERS ON YOUR GIANT SCREEN! PLEASE INCORPORATE CRUNCHY RED STRIPS INTO MORE THINGS!

Seriously, Taco Bell: It’s love. It’s all love. If you’re out there reading, know that I am a reasonably smart guy who spends a lot of time thinking about Taco Bell. We can make this work for both of us, I’m certain.

Denver-area Taco Bell apparently popular among hookers: There’s plenty to enjoy in Jenn Wohletz’s experiential column on trying the new Taco Bell menu items at a Taco Bell on East Colfax Ave. in Denver, but nothing quite jumps off the page to a Denver outsider like her note that at 7 p.m. the Taco Bell in question “was ringed with a circus of homeless people, hustlers and a couple of angry-looking hookers.”

I followed up with a Denver native and asked, “What do you know about the area around E. Colfax Ave. in Denver?” He replied, “Full of hookers.” So it seems to make sense that some of the more sensible hookers would find their way to the Taco Bell, since obviously hookers need to eat, too.

In my experience, there is little to no correlation between seediness and quality in Taco Bells. Some of the best and worst Taco Bells I’ve ever been to have been in the sketchiest places, and some of the best and worst have been in the nicest areas. Case by case thing.

Taco Bell makes glorious return to Sedalia, Mo.: I hate to profile here, but Sedalia Democrat columnist Travis McMullen looks like the type of dude who thinks critically about Taco Bell (and it takes one to know one). So when he expounds upon why the local Taco Bell developed a much more dedicated and vocal following than competing fast food locations in the area, I suggest we listen.

Are all the songs about Tuesdays sad? “Ruby Tuesday,” “Tuesday’s Gone,” “Tuesday Afternoon,” “Tuesday Heartbreak.” No one writes a “Tuesday I’m in Love.”

First and foremost: Our man @Ceetar, who has come out of Internet anonymity and revealed himself to be Michael Donato, sampled the churrs at his local Taco Bell last week. He even snapped some photos for the people:

That’s a bold claim — quite literally — from the self-aware wrapper: “the tastiest experience of your day.” So how is it?

“Soft, chewy and crisp, warm and delicious,” Donato reports. “It was pretty much a perfect churro and the curvy nature of it is much more visually appealing than the typically straight one that looks like a pipe fitting or something.”

Alarming story: One time at Splish Splash out on Long Island, I got a churro and bit into it to find a metal rod inside. It seemed like it was probably the metal rod upon which the churro had been heated in the spinning churro-machine thing, which somehow came off with the churro when they served it to me.

A true dog of the people, the Chihuahua has tirelessly devoted his life to one thing – the pursuit of tacos. This kind of dedication has allowed him to heighten his natural skills of navigation, negotiation and general deviousness. Now he is putting his considerable talents to work fighting the ultimate evil in the universe. Because, he rationalizes, when the universe is free, the tacos are free. In the meantime, he’s confident he’ll get that Jedi mind trick to work eventually.

Taco Bell introduces new menu items: The good news for longtime Taco Bell lovers is it appears Taco Bell is moving away from fancy celebrity-chef endorsed fare and gimmicky cross-branded overrated hype drivers back toward its base, gimmicky uni-branded Taco Bell stuff. To start, there are two new dessert items and XXL Steak Nachos.

The new dessert offerings are churros and cookie sandwiches. The former may seem a bit redundant with the longstanding presence of Cinnamon Twists on the menu, and presumably the cinnamon sugar sprinkled atop the churros will be the same stuff used to coat the twists. I’ve never personally felt the need for a Taco Bell dessert beyond what’s already available on the menu, but maybe a softer version of the Cinnamon Twists will be useful for those nursing jaw injuries or something. And the cookie sandwich — misidentified by Advertising Age as containing vanilla ice cream but actually containing “vanilla cream filling” — appears to offer Taco Bell customers the opportunity to try that thing they’ve always kind of wanted to get from that cookie store at the mall but never had the opportunity or wherewithal to purchase.

The XXL Steak Nachos look to be a lot like other Taco Bell nachos, but larger. Even the photo on the Taco Bell website shows the toppings poorly distributed, which is a bit concerning:

Somewhat notably, the XXL Steak Nachos will be the first standard nachos on the menu to feature guacamole, continuing the trend set by XXL and Cantina items to incorporate more guacamole in Taco Bell stuff.

The more intriguing stuff comes later:

Then, in the coming weeks, Taco Bell will also announce some savory snack foods in the form of wraps. Dubbed “loaded grillers,” the savory snacks will essentially be nachos, chicken or a loaded baked potato, all wrapped in a tortilla.

It’s unclear how this mysterious chicken wrapped in a tortilla product will differ from Taco Bell’s numerous chicken burritos, and I’m skeptical that the baked-potato version won’t just be a re-imagining of the various fiesta-potato driven products that I never order. So I’ve got a lot riding on this nachos-in-a-wrap concept, and I feel pretty confident that Taco Bell won’t let me down.

Taco Bell benevolence of the week: Part of tracking Taco Bell news means leafing through a hell of a lot of stories about crimes committed in Taco Bells. So it was refreshing to find this heartwarming story from Merced, Calif. today, about a woman who left her purse in Taco Bell only to have it returned free of charge by the Taco Bell’s heroic manager.

Peterson, who lives in Rocklin, said she and her family stopped at the Taco Bell on their way to visit family. She had just entered Roseville when she realized she left her purse on the back of a chair inside the Martin Luther King Jr. Way restaurant.

What would follow is a 130-mile journey for the yellow purse and a series of events over the next few days that would amaze Peterson and restore her faith in humanity.

Typically, my faith in humanity is restored during my visits to Taco Bell, not afterwards.

Public service announcement: Construction of a Taco Bell location at the corner of Livernois and Walton in Rochester Hills, Mich. has been delayed by bad soils discovered during surveying. The franchisees will spend the winter redesigning the proposed Taco Bell to adjust for the marl and processing the appropriate building permits with the city. Concerned citizens wondering why the Taco Bell’s owners will not instead pursue the larger lot on the same corner that once featured a Big Boy should know that the Big Boy lot was not made available to the Taco Bell franchisees, and that Taco Bell representative Bill Beckett believes the targeted spot is “a wonderful location for a Taco Bell.”